


Visiting Yana, Shoes Terribly Dirty

by persepolis130



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: First Time, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, POV First Person, Tigers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 01:04:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11093673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persepolis130/pseuds/persepolis130
Summary: Caius accompanies Alcibiades to the countryside, where he has a delightful time pestering Yana and pretending to do housework.  Then, against all logic, it turns out that the general isattractedto him!  My dear, can youimagine?





	1. Chapter 1

**Part I: Alcibiades**

I blamed the whole thing on the chickens, though maybe that wasn't fair. Caius Greylace certainly wasn't _their_ fault. As a matter of fact, I think they thought he was as crazy as I did. But then I guess that's why he came back to the house five minutes after Yana sent him out to feed them.

"Your chickens _bite_!" he declared, waving a hand in front of my face.

"Chickens don't have teeth," I told him, setting up another piece of wood on the stump. I'd split about half the cord so far, and I was starting to get a nice burn in my shoulder from swinging the ax. "They don't bite, they peck."

"Thank _goodness_ I decided not to bring my peacocks. Just look at my finger! Those creatures are absolutely _vicious_!" he said, like he hadn't heard me. "Do you think it might leave a scar? Oh! Or get infected and require amputation!"

He sounded way too happy about that, like having his finger cut off would be some grand, gay adventure on par with our fabulous stay with the Ke-Han. As far as I could see, there wasn't even anything _wrong_ with his finger. Damned thing wasn't even bleeding.

"You'll live," I told him.

His smile stretched all the way across his crazy face. "I'm sure I'll need a bandage!" he proclaimed, and pranced off to harass poor Yana again, like he'd been doing twenty times a day ever since he got here. Bastion forbid the woman get any actual work done. He dangled his hand like he didn't dare touch anything with it, and I still couldn't figure why he grew his nails out like a woman's.

"Greylace," I called after him, "did you at least feed the chickens?"

He stopped in his tracks, turned to me, tossed his hair to the side, and frowned. The sun glinted off the fussy little buttons on his shirt. "Oh, no dear, I didn't quite get that far. The ground was just so _dirty_ , and with my new shoes--"

It figured. I _knew_ I should've left him in Thremedon when he stopped for more clothes. 

I stuck the ax into the stump and headed toward the coop.

"Thank you, my dear!" he called. 

I pretended not to hear.

Yana put some ointment on whatever Caius was pretending was injured and bandaged his finger, and then she set him to helping fix dinner. I was dreading what Caius plus a stove burner might produce, but I shouldn't have underestimated Yana. She'd taught the twins to cook when they were four, after all, and _they_ never burned the house down. And I guess if Greylace did, I had the bastion-forsaken Talent to put out the fire.

"I'm cooking, my dear! Isn't it terribly exciting?" he asked, his off-kilter grin making his whole head look cockeyed. 

"You're not cooking," I told him. "You're stirring."

He made a noise like he was offended, but it was true. Yana was filling all sorts of cups and spoons with all manner of powders and spices a man shouldn't admit to knowing even if he did, and pouring them into the pot. Caius was mixing them together.

But he wasn't doing too bad at it. At least as good as a couple of four-year-olds, anyway.

"Can you think what the other members of the Basquiat would say if they could see me now? Oh, it's too _delightful_ to imagine!" he chirped, waving the stirring spoon around in the air like a king's scepter. "Do you think I should write Margrave Royston?"

"You're dripping dinner on the floor," I told him, because he was, and I had no idea what in bastion's name he was babbling about anyway. Why would anyone write a letter about cooking? Though I wouldn't mind seeing the look on Royston's face when he read it.

Actually, I hoped it was a damn long letter, with about three hundred exclamation points. And pressed violets glued in the margins. With hearts dotting all the i's. There was _some_ benefit to being friends with lunatics, after all.

Of course there was lunacy to it, too. Because just then, Yana brought over a cup of flour, Greylace bent too low over the pot to make sure he didn't miss anything for his letter, and a cloud of white puffed back up in his face. He coughed and wiped at his eye-- his good one that glittered like fancy jewelry-- but he was still holding onto the spoon, and he smeared dough all across his chin.

Yana tutted and took over stirring, and I should've known a couple of little girls could manage it better. 

"Here," I said, and wiped off the dough with my thumb.

And that's where the chickens came in.

Well, not just there, not _exactly_ , and they didn't physically come into the house or anything like that. But if they hadn't pecked at his damn finger, he wouldn't have been cooking, and I wouldn't have wiped at his chin, and I never would've seen it.

What _it_ was, I didn't know, but I swear on all of Volstov it was there, spreading across his face like the glow of morning on the horizon when you'd been up all night on watch, and your relief was about to come tell you it was finally your turn for some shuteye. It was just that beautiful, and it hit me the same way, though maybe somehow deeper inside, like a hundred sunrises, and a hundred reliefs, and the warm bed after, too.

That didn't make any sense, though, because it was just Caius _lunatic_ Greylace's face, with skin too pale and features too sharp, and even if his skin was warm and soft as blankets and his gaze was sharp like a polished sword, he wasn't any kind of sunrise.

Except that he was.

He was the best sunrise I'd ever seen.

"My dear, I do hope you're planning to bathe before dinner. You have a bit of an odor about you," he said. 

And just like that, the sunrise was gone. 

It left me feeling pretty out of sorts, like someone had just dumped a bucket of ice water over my head, and now I was all cold and wet and too shocked to be upset about it. 

So I went and took a bath.

* * * * *

The next time it happened, I was tending to the horses. 

Counting the two from the Ke-Han, which I figured they owed me for my trouble even though I got my own back, we had nine at the farm. A couple of them would need to be reshod pretty soon, and I decided I'd take care of it. Yana took them in to the farrier in town, but I'd done plenty of that sort of thing in the army, and it was quicker and cheaper to take care of it myself when I was home.

Caius followed me like a noisy shadow, exclaiming on how every single thing I did was more fascinating than the last, though I couldn't see how any of it was really all that great to begin with. It was just farm work. And if he was so damned fond of the farm, why had he brought his own bedding, and made me hang drapes and bring a lowboy into his room so he could set up all his toiletries on it? The place was starting to look like an apothecary with all the bottles and jars, and it irked me something fierce.

He was in the barn with me brushing one of the Ke-Han horses he called Mei-Ling, though I'd told him half a dozen times her name was Daisy. He'd had to spray something that smelled like a bouquet on her before he'd touch her with his bare hands, and now the whole damn barn stank like a cheap whorehouse. 

I was sizing horseshoes while he yammered on about something that sounded like a lot of noise when you'd been listening to it for as long as I had. It was like when a mosquito kept buzzing around your ear, and you couldn't help but swat at it. But I couldn't swat at him. At least, not without breaking every bone in his body.

"Greylace," I said finally, throwing down a shoe.

He looked up, eyebrows raised and mouth open in delight, and I was glad I didn't have the shoe in my hand anymore because I'd have thrown it at him. But then the sunlight caught his face just right, and just like that, the thing I'd seen before was back. He wasn't crazy or noisy or annoying or anything else I could possibly find fault with. He was the perfect sunrise.

And he was something else, too. 

The barn smelling like loose women might've had something to do with it, but I wasn't that sort of man and didn't usually get much out of that kind of thing. Sure when you're young it's a thrill, but after a while, it feels like spinning your wheels. Once you realize the girls screamed just as loud for the man before you, and did the same damned thing for the man after, the appeal just wasn't there. But fuck me for a Ke-Han whore if I didn't feel it now, just looking at screwy little Caius Greylace. 

Something felt different about it, though. And it wasn't only on account of him being all dolled up like a woman, because even though he wore dresses and pinned his hair up and grew out his nails the way only proper ladies and women of the Fans saw fit to do, he was--

"Yes, I agree, the poor thing clearly misses home. Should I braid her hair?" he said. 

"What?" I asked, more at the break in my thoughts than the words. Whatever I'd seen was gone again, just like that, and it left me feeling strange and empty like the last time. And with the start of a headache from the bastion-damned perfume.

" _Well_ ," Caius began, looking pleased with himself. "Being the fine beasts that they are, these horses are obviously accustomed to being cared for by men with meticulously braided locks. I suspect my hair will be long enough to braid quite soon, but until then, I fear that such lack of accessorized coiffures may--"

"Right," I said. "I get it. You're not braiding Daisy's hair."

" _Mei-Ling_ , dear," he corrected with a sigh like I was the one who had the name wrong. How I could get my own damn horse's name wrong was beyond me and just one more reason why Caius Greylace was nutty as a fruitcake. Why were we even friends?

"You're not braiding my horse's hair," I told him, just to be clear.

"Hmm," he said with a shrug. 

* * * * *

The next day, I was in the barn pulling the braids out of Mei-Ling's mane when it started to rain. I was already pretty annoyed with the way her hair was all kinked up, and when I remembered Yana was visiting next door and hadn't taken the wash off the line yet, I swore so loud, the horse startled and nearly kicked my knee in. Every pair of clean socks I owned was about to get soaked.

I came around the corner cursing under my breath, and the sight that met me stopped me in my tracks. In fact, I even backed up a step or two. It was such a ridiculous thing to see, I had to blink a couple times before I could believe it. 

Greylace was taking the laundry off the line. 

He was using one hand to undo the clothespins, and he had the other above his face like a hat brim to keep the rain off. He was probably worried it would smear the powder on his face or something. I didn't know where the fool was thinking he was going to put the clothes after he got them down because he didn't have a free hand for a basket. 

I clomped past the chicken coop where the hard ground was getting slippery with mud, and came to his rescue. 

The shoulders of his frilly white shirt were already dark from the water, stuck to his skin and making him look even skinnier than he usually did. His silky hair in its little clips was damp, and strands of it clung to the back of his neck. On his feet were Yana's boots. The leather was cracked at the toes, and they were caked in muck from the garden, and I couldn't believe he would've touched anything so dirty, much less put his dainty little feet inside. I wondered if he had to douse them with perfume first.

He smiled and held out a pair of Yana's underpants. 

I wiped my hands clean and hung the things over my arm, trying not to look at them or touch them too much. Greylace piled the rest of the clothes on top, sloshing across the wet ground as he made his way down the clothesline, looking like a well-dressed duck. He'd just taken down the last sock when the sky opened up, and the rain came down in sheets across the fields. The sound of it washing against the tin roof of the farmhouse filled my ears.

Rising above it was Caius's voice as he let loose a squeal that could've put an offended court lady to shame, and made a beeline for the house. You'd think he'd never been wet before. He took more baths than anyone I knew, so I couldn't see what the problem was. Water was water. I tucked the clothes under me to keep them out of the rain and made my way through the puddles after him. 

Inside it was dry, and the air smelled like baked apples. I toed my boots off and took a look at the clothes. With any luck, they'd be fine by morning if we hung them up someplace. Maybe over the banister. They might not all fit, but I could at least get the socks dry.

Soaked to the skin beside me, Greylace was laughing.

It wasn't one of the snide laughs gossips made, nasty and short and held close in their throats like someone might snatch it away, or the coy tittering giggle of a woman. And it certainly wasn't that stupid Ke-Han laugh he did into his sleeve. It was a free, open laugh, the kind you didn't hear many fancy people make unless they'd already had their share of drink. 

I hadn't heard a whole a lot in this life I liked more than that laugh.

And then he turned his crazy smiling face to me, smoothed his dripping hair over his bad eye, and that _thing_ happened again. There wasn't any sun this time, but I saw that other Caius-- the one that made me gape like a simpleton-- breaking through the clouds. He was half lunatic and half woman and half beautiful enough to take my breath away, and it just didn't add up, but somehow I didn't mind.

"You seem to have dropped a brassiere, General," he said.

That should've brought me out of whatever fit of insanity had taken hold of my reason, but it didn't. 

It actually made me smile.

"Oh, here, let me take those," he said, and hauled the pile of clothes from my arms. It was so tall, he had to tip his head to see over the top of it. He'd taken off Yana's boots, and they lay in a muddy pile on the doormat next to mine. His feet were bare, and they made wet footprints about the size of my thumb across the entryway. He'd painted his toenails pink.

"Huh," I said.

He tipped the clothes into a basket and said, "Stay where you are, dear, or you'll drip all over the floors, and we can't have that. I just mopped them."

"Yana mopped them," I said in a daze. "You emptied the bucket."

"Yes, but it was a very heavy bucket," he insisted. "And the water was _exceptionally_ dirty."

"Huh," I said again because he was making my brain go funny. Something dark was smudged around his eye, making it stand out like a gem against his pale face, and his shirt was so wet you could see the pink of his skin through it. Two dark points on his chest poked up under the fabric, round and hard like pebbles. 

Cold rainwater was dripping from my hair and off the tip of my nose, and all things considered, Greylace was looking pretty warm. And soft, too. Though I wasn't sure how good he'd be at warming me up seeing as how there was so little of him there. Guess there was only one way to find out.

"Are you quite alright, my dear?" he asked. "Your face has gone rather red. Here then, perhaps there's a towel…"

But I didn't let him get that far. 

His skin was cooler than I thought it would be, but just as soft. I ran my fingertips across his neck to the base of his throat and pulled open the top button of his shirt. He looked down at my hand and then up at my face and didn't tell me to stop. So I kept going. Once I got to the third button, I had to go down on my knees because he was so bastion-bloody short I couldn't reach, and right then I'd have turned in my uniform just to taste him.

The rainwater left a metallic tang on my tongue, but underneath that was the saltiness of his skin and something sweet I couldn't place. I traced the taste of it across his chest, and then down to where his skin was stretched too tight across his ribs because he liked that garbage the Ke-Han fed us but said Yana's meatloaf gave him indigestion. 

"Mmm," he said when my tongue met his navel. 

I pulled him closer, my hand wrapping halfway around his waist, and his fingers twined themselves into my hair. 

"My dear," Caius murmured.

I thought that sounded about right, and I ran my hands up the smooth, soft skin of his back. Easing his shirt off at the shoulders, I licked a path from his navel down to the top of his trousers and felt his breath catch in his chest. His fingers in my hair tightened, and they pulled my lips from his skin, and my eyes up to his. 

"My dear," he said, "I'm afraid there's been some misunderstanding."


	2. Chapter 2

**Part II: Caius**

The proverbial carriage of my life had hit yet another bump in the road. It was a fairly sizable bump with unkempt hair and a pernicious tendency toward wearing red army jackets that were all but threadbare at the elbows. And it kept grunting at me. The entire waylaying affair was most distressing. 

Things had been going so nicely!

When we'd left Thremedon with a trunk full of my new assortment of fashionable yet functional clothing several weeks ago, I couldn't have been more pleased. Alcibiades could have left me any number of times, yet he'd only grumbled and rolled his eyes and waited. I was beginning to believe in my heart of hearts that he really _did_ care about me. He'd even convinced dear Yana to put up with my constant pestering!

Oh, but then came that horrible storm. I'd been _most_ self-sacrificing in going out in the pouring rain wearing a pair of boots that absolutely _screamed_ faux-pas, and how did the general repay me?

By molesting me in the entryway!

If he'd been any other man, I would have understood what was about to happen and nipped it in the bud. The very idea of a man like Alcibiades harboring a prurient interest in someone like me was patently ridiculous. No doubt his idea of an impassioned affair was a roll in the hay with a freckle-faced farmgirl. Whatever did he plan to do with a court dandy in silks? 

The answer, I was sure, was that he had no plan at all. The urge had struck him rather like an inebriated carriage driver might strike an unwary pedestrian, and he'd acted upon it without thinking. My rebuff was only as natural as stepping out of the road. 

There was no reason for him to have taken it so personally. 

It had been nearly a week, and he seemed to be getting worse instead of better. Even Yana was beginning to be disturbed by it, and her constant clucks of misgiving were distracting me terribly from my plans of designing her a new wardrobe. Or at least undergarments which didn't double as sails on a Ke-Han warship. 

I wracked my brain for hours on end over what possible means I had to reverse the situation. If mere frustration were the issue, a quick trip into town would have resolved it. Surely the women here were bored enough to argue amongst themselves for the opportunity to service a war hero. It might even come to blows. How delightful! 

Yet the days came and went, and Alcibiades remained on the farm, as surly as ever. It was not simple frustration, then; it was me.

My first thought was to purchase him a particularly extravagant gift as an apology. The general did _so_ enjoy being pampered, a fact which I associated with the characteristic self-sacrifice displayed for our country by those who had seen little enough of its inner workings to still respect it. I loved indulging my more generous whims when it came to dear Alcibiades, and this would be the perfect opportunity.

Yet somehow I knew this would not do at all. 

But what would?

The answer came to me while I was doing the dishes. Or rather, as the general would correct me, _drying_ the dishes. I had attempted to wash them, but when I put my hand into the dishwater, I'd gotten particles of food underneath my fingernails and had very nearly been violently ill all over the kitchen counter.

In any case, I knew what I had to do. I would give him what he wanted.

I would give him _me_.

Mind you, this was not by any means an easy decision to make. Before my exile, I'd been approached by any number of men at court requesting just such liberties, many of them gentlemen of fine breeding, and I'd felt no inclination toward it whatsoever. And for what reason? Because I'd been repelled by the idea of intimate interaction with someone who may or may not have truly had feelings for me? This seemed foolish in retrospect, turning my nose up at handsome men who wished to bring me pleasure. 

Though I can hardly be blamed for my lack of foresight; I _was_ only thirteen.

It was different with the general, though. He was no dashing courtier in tall boots and high collars, offering lavish gifts of jewels and real estate in exchange for my affections. He couldn't take me to his manor house, or rent out an entire restaurant on the Amazement so that he could sit me in his lap and feed me iced fruit off his own spoon. In fact, he offered nothing that I could fathom beyond the ever-present smell of livestock and his continued friendship.

And that was why I had to do it.

With as much as I'd been through in my short life, there was little which could put me on edge anymore. This was no exception. I had my plan intricately mapped out upon the vast yet rather cluttered plain of my mind, and if all else failed, I always had my tigers. They prowled about in the back of my thoughts, teeth bared, just _itching_ for a chance to come out and play.

I didn't want them to, though. What I _wanted_ was my friend back.

I was able to put things into motion the next night when Yana had gone across the way to a neighboring farm with some biscuits for the farmer's wife. The woman was quite pregnant for what must have been the seventeenth time, if the swarms of small children with dirty knees running about the place were any indication. She was having a hard time of things, though I couldn't fathom why; one would think she'd have perfected the process by now.

The general was yet again tending to the woodpile. I couldn't help but wonder just how much firewood Yana would really be needing this winter. It seemed he'd stacked half a forest out there already. It wasn't as thought there weren't less labor intensive methods of avoiding me.

Well, to each his own, I supposed.

Chopping firewood wasn't as flashy as sword practice, but it was still an impressive feat. I watched from the kitchen window, examining the flex of his shoulders beneath his sweat-soaked shirt as he raised the ax and brought it down again, sending splinters of wood into the warm evening air. Although he may have had appallingly unrefined manners and an odor rather like an overworked horse, I reassured myself that Alcibiades wasn't an _entirely_ unappealing man. 

In any case, it should be _fascinating_ to see how those shoulders looked out of that shirt!

He was so well trained by now that I didn't even have to direct him to the bath when he came in. He grunted at my "Hello, my dear!" and promptly locked the bathroom door behind him. Or rather, he _would_ have locked the door if I hadn't wedged a matchstick into the mechanism to keep it unlocked.

I headed up the stairs to my room to prepare. So much to do, so little time!

The pipes in the farmhouse were old and gurgled like a happy old man when filled with too much water. As soon as I heard that gleeful gurgle, I knew he was draining the tub, and I padded back downstairs, my feet bare and body covered with only my robe. I'd let my hair down over one shoulder, and though I'd decided earlier to leave it unadorned, at the last minute I failed to resist my innate urge to accessorize. I chose a pretty lacquered hair comb I'd accidentally on purpose forgotten to return to Josette after borrowing it without permission, and I must say it did the trick. I was so stunning, even _I_ wanted me!

Alcibiades was more than a little shocked when I walked in on him. He'd just stepped out of the tub and nearly fell back in.

"Are you quite finished, General?" I asked.

He made a noise in the back of his throat and attempted to cover his nakedness with a towel. He stretched it this way and that, but the poor thing didn't stand a chance. 

"What are you doing in here?" he asked. "And stop calling me _General_."

"Am I not wearing a bathrobe?" I asked, affecting an innocent expression.

"Hmph," he said, settling for wrapping the towel about his midsection. He was eyeing his clothes, which were sitting on a stool next to the door. I stepped in front of them.

"I was thinking, actually, that the two of us might have a little chat," I said. "About our earlier… misunderstanding."

"Nothing to talk about," he told me, rather too quickly.

"Well, it seems to me that there is," I answered. "I'm afraid I may not have been entirely clear as to my meaning, and you may have thus assumed that I was rebuffing your advances, when I was in fact--"

"Look, could we talk about it later?" he asked, his jaw gone tight. "When I've got some clothes on?"

"I'm afraid that would be counterproductive, my dear," I informed him.

"What do you," he started.

I hadn't bothered to tie my robe, and it slipped quite easily from my shoulders. It was of the finest Ke-Han silk, so dark brown as to look almost black, and it slid down my body and to the floor at my feet like melting chocolate.

For the barest moment, the look on his face made me fear I had been somehow mistaken in my judgment of the situation. Or perhaps now that he could see what manner of item he'd been unwrapping, he'd changed his mind and wanted it back in the box. Though I was no longer a child, my appearance was still very much that of youth, and likely always would be. Such things happened when, instead of branching, your family tree rose straight as a majestic pine above the forest floor, and you ended up being your own nephew.

Then I realized that what made his eyes widen so was not disgust, but an entirely different emotion, though just as strong. I smiled. 

"The misunderstanding," I told him, and he blinked at my face as though he'd forgotten the very notion of speech until this moment, "was _all_ mine."

Stepping daintily out of the pool of fabric at my feet, I approached him. It was only fair, after all, that I get a good look at what _I'd_ unwrapped. He clutched the towel to himself as though his life depended on it, so I contented myself with examining the rest of him, which was rather enough to take in on its own. 

His skin was dark from the sun in some places-- his hands and forearms, and a vee at his neck where he left the collar of his shirt unbuttoned-- but light in others. His legs were nearly as pale as mine. A smattering of freckles covered his shoulders, fading back to the color of his skin as though embarrassed of the shirtless forays of insouciant youth. 

A trail of wiry blond hair poked out from beneath the towel and ran up his thick midsection to spread itself across a chest that would take two of me to wrap my arms around. I reached a hand above my head to run my fingers over a set of powerful pectorals, the muscle firm but skin smooth to the touch, warm and still damp from the bath. As my fingertips dipped into a deep scar, one of many war wounds to be seen on the broad expanse of flesh offered up to me, he swallowed hard. 

His biceps were as large as my head. I squeezed my fingertips into one of them, and it was unyielding as stone. How would such arms feel wrapped around me? I felt an unexpected shiver contemplating the possibilities. How fascinating!

Trailing my fingers across the muscle and up over his shoulder, I stepped around him to see a view from the rear, as it were. 

And here was where I faltered, though only for a moment. It had been my decision, mine and mine alone, and I would neither back out nor regret it. Alcibiades was a dear friend, and he deserved no less. If I waited until the perfect man came along before I offered up the flower of my innocence, I would likely be waiting for a _very_ long while.

But was my first time _truly_ to be with a man who had back hair?

Alcibiades cleared his throat. 

"Yes, my dear?" I asked, glad to rid myself of the sight as I stepped around to face him.

Scarcely two seconds had passed before he'd grabbed me and hauled me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, just as he had in the theatre in Lapis. The feeling was quite exhilarating, though unexpected enough that it had my tigers scenting the air. With as much skin to skin contact as I had just now, they could rip the throat out of his mind with a mere flick of a mental finger.

"Shush," I told them as the general pounded up the stairs with me in tow, the boards creaking under our weight.

My presumption was that he was taking me to his bedroom, and I was not disappointed. Though the farmhouse was rather larger than I had expected, Alcibiades' room was small and dim, with a sloped ceiling and a single window facing north. His furnishings consisted of a wooden spindle bed and a chest of drawers, above which hung a document with ink so faded that its original purpose had been lost to time. I'd been inside before, of course, though this was the first time I'd been invited, so to speak. 

He dropped me onto his bed with such suddenness that it took the breath from my lungs. I gasped for air and looked up to see him press one knee onto the bed and lean over me. The mattress shifted, and he slid his hand behind my head. 

I've never been kissed. Strange perhaps, considering my exquisite beauty, but true, though I suppose it was because I'd never _allowed_ myself be to kissed. What I had expected of it after years of scandalous rumors and court gossip, I couldn't say, but this was not it. This was… I had no idea _what_ it was!

There was simply too much to process-- the soft slide of his lips against mine, and the glide of his tongue, the press of body against body, skin against skin-- it was all too searingly intense. It touched on so many emotions inside of me, made my heart pound in my chest and blood pump hot through my veins as though my body had caught fire. My head spun, and the draw of his mouth tugged at my soul as though with greedy hands.

But it was my hands that were tugging-- at his hair and his neck and the thick muscle of his arms-- to bring him closer, _closer_ , so close that we became one being with one heart and one mind, because my own body suddenly felt terribly inadequate. I was an empty glass just waiting to be filled, and he the water. I was incomplete without him.

I could have kissed him forever and died without regrets. In fact, I'd rather planned to. When he pulled away, I made my protest known quite vocally, though not in any language I was familiar with. 

"Fuck," Alcibiades said.

I still didn't care for the word, yet the way he said it-- thick and needful as though the same emotions were burning inside of him as well-- had my heart all aflutter in my chest. How I wished he would say it again!

And then his mouth was on my neck, trailing across to suck at my earlobe, making me gasp with a light nip of teeth. His hand was moving against my thigh, rubbing with callused fingers over the soft skin and sending chills up and down my spine. It was glorious, this feeling, as though I were the center of the universe, and everything revolved around me and the tight ball of heat coiling in the pit of my stomach. 

I must have given some sign, though what it was I couldn't say, because his lips slid down my chest, breath hot against my skin. When his tongue dipped into my navel, I feared I might swoon; such was the effect he was having on my body. 

"My dear, I feel faint," I said, or attempted to say. My tongue felt thick, and the words came out as a moaned jumble, lurid as bawd on Hapenny even to my own ears. Should I have felt ashamed?

I did not. I felt liberated, _alive_ , my body singing with pleasure at Alcibiades' every touch. As melodramatic as it may have been, it seemed as if I'd been waiting for this a very long time, as though it were destiny or fate, though I believed in neither.

_So this is what it means to be loved_ , I thought, as his mouth drifted lower still. 

I must have screamed when his hands grasped my hips, and his mouth closed around me. I _must_ have, but I heard nothing past the pounding of my own heart in my ears. His lips slid down my length, and I gripped the general's shoulders until my fingernails bit into the flesh. 

"Wait!" I cried, because that coil of heat was gripping too tightly, and I was so _gracious_ for his efforts, and would it not be _terribly_ indecorous if I--

But then I knew nothing but the blissful pull of his mouth, the slide of his tongue, and his hands holding fast to my hips. Stars flashed behind my eyelids as that ball of heat coalesced and then shot through my body, sending sparks up and down my spine, and a delicious tingling all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. I'd never felt such a thing before in my life, such a complete sense of release flooding me like a river breaking through its dam, and I reveled in the sensation, awash with pleasure.

The next thing I knew, Alcibiades' hands were turning me over, and I hung in his grasp like a wilted flower, petals drooping beneath the summer sun. He lay a kiss upon the back of my neck and then brought my legs together, bending my body as though prostrating me before him. Then he leaned over me, legs on either side of mine, his warm stomach resting against my back.

"Greylace," he whispered. "Hey."

I patted vaguely at his knee to show I'd heard, and he pressed between my thighs. I supposed this was how they did it in the army, but I was warm and sated and still delightfully tingly all over and didn't mind terribly. He was more gentle than I'd expected, and in the end, he braced himself with a hand against the wall above the wooden slats of the headboard. I listened to the catch of his breath and watched the hand as it slid down, leaving a streak of damp against the faded paint.

When he was finished, he dropped down onto the bed beside me, red-faced from the effort. I wrapped my arms around one of his biceps and gave it a squeeze. Then I straightened my hair clip, pulled my hair over my left eye, and pressed my lips to the tiny crescents my fingernails had cut into his shoulder.

Alcibiades rubbed a hand across his chest. He had a satisfied look on his face as though he'd just finished off his third helping of Yana's beef and potato stew. I'd never compared myself to cuisine before. If I had, I would have thought myself more closely analogous to dessert, though it seemed that misestimation of self was part and parcel of the human condition.

"I think that went quite well," I told him. "Don't you?"

"You scream like a woman," he replied.

I sighed. "I shall assume you meant that poorly-phrased statement as a compliment and will take it as such. It _was_ a compliment, was it not?" I asked.

"Greylace," he said, "why is there a tiger in my bed?"

I looked up to see what the man was talking about, and indeed there he was. He was a rather small tiger yet with the look of a cub, and he lay at our feet licking his paw.

"Not to worry, my dear, he's quite content," I reassured.

Alcibiades looked at me, looked back at the tiger, and shrugged. 

I beamed and snuggled in closer. How lovely it was that we were now all acquainted!

I thought of that letter I'd wanted to write to Royston earlier about the splendors of the countryside, and wondered how it would read now. Rather differently, it would seem! I made a mental checklist of the room: Alcibiades, lying beside me with his damp hair tousled, his eyes drifting shut. The parts of me he'd kissed, now cooling after the heat of his touch. The old wooden bed with its mattress dipping in the middle from our weight. My imaginary tiger lying at our feet. The chest of drawers, and above it the framed paper from--

"General, dear," I said. "Whatever is that hanging above your dresser?"

He snorted as though he'd been on the edge of sleep, and looked where I was pointing.

"That? No idea," he told me. "Been there since I was a kid."

How terribly disappointing. And typical. 

Well, it wasn't as though I would truly compose such a letter, in any case. To me, this day was more sacred than the Well itself and was not to be bandied about no matter how entertaining the reaction would be. This day had revealed to me that which I had always hoped for, yet had hardly dared to dream: that I was a creature eminently lovable in nature, meant to be desired and cherished. For so long, I had been able to see myself as nothing more than a pawn to be used for my Talent, or a gallery showpiece to be paraded about on someone's arm. But no more.

Alcibiades had no use for magic, and to whom would show me off? The chickens?

Part of my heart was now his, and though I'd feared giving it away-- and I recognized now that fear was what the issue had been, and a refusal to look beyond myself because of it-- I knew that my gift was in good hands. Alcibiades would never let me go. He would never betray me, or tire of me, or manipulate me into unhappiness. He was far too simple for that!

And I, in return, would allow him to do as he pleased to my body behind closed doors. He could kiss me utterly senseless, put his mouth wherever he liked whenever it suited him, and I would offer nary a word of protest. Provided that he had bathed recently and hadn't eaten any of Yana's caramelized onions for dinner, of course. And perhaps, some years down the road when I'd grown accustomed to the idea, I might even agree to reciprocate, given proper incentive and enough alcohol.

I felt a welling of great joy in my heart for what an _excellent_ friend I was.

Though there was still one issue that needed resolving…

But perhaps I should give the general a bit more time to grow accustomed to my particular brand of ministrations before addressing the issue, I decided. Yes, I would hate to unsettle him, and given his predilection against shaving even his _face_ , convincing him to allow me to bring a razor to his _back_ would be a tough sell.

And with that, I curled up beside him for a long, restful sleep after an entirely fantastic day. It was, I knew, the first of many, _many_ more to come!

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted in 2010 on LiveJournal.


End file.
